Tarantino Reveals All 6 Actors Who Were In The Running To Star In 'Django Unchained'

Recall over the summer, at Comic-Con in San Diego, when Quentin Tarantino finally discussed Will Smith's non-casting in the upcoming Django Unchained, and he revealed that he met with 6 different actors for the role, before finally settling on Jamie Foxx... and the question we had was who were the 6 actors he met for the part.

Many of you chimed in with the names of actors you thought made up the 6, and there were several combos, but of the 32 responses, only 1 person got the entire 6 correct.

The one name that the majority of you missed was... drumroll... Tyrese. Yes, Tyrese was one of the 6 actors Tarantino met for the role.

This evening, EW posted exclusive excerpts from a Tarantino interview with Playboy magazine (the entire interview hasn't been published in Playboy yet), and here's what he had to say about the casting process:

“I met six different actors and had extensive meetings with all of them, and I went in-depth on all of their work,” Tarantino tells Playboy (in the issue that will be on stands Nov. 20). “Idris Elba, Chris Tucker, Terrence Howard, M.K. Williams [from HBO's Boardwalk Empire], Tyrese. They all appreciated the material, and I was going to put them through the paces, make them go off against one another and kind of put up an obstacle course. And then I met Jamie and realized I didn’t need to do that.” So what was it about Foxx that led Tarantino to cast him? “He was the cowboy… Forget the fact that he has his own horse — and that is actually his horse in the movie. He’s from Texas; he understands. …He understood what it’s like to be thought of as an ‘other.’”

Furthermore, Tarantino was also asked about the Will Smith situation - Will being his very first choice for the part.

You might remember when, while plugging Men In Black III, in an interview withEmpire magazine, Will said the following when asked why he didn't take the part:

"I came really close, it was one of the most amazing screenplays I had ever ever seen... I was in the middle of 'Men In Black 3' and [Tarantino] was ready to go, and I just couldn't sit with him and get through the issues, so I didn't want to hold him up. That thing's going to be ridiculous. It is a genius screenplay."

In the EW/Playboy excerpt, Tarantino said this:

“We spent quite a few hours together over a weekend when he was in New York doing Men in Black III. …I think half the process was an excuse for us to hang out and spend time with one another. …It just wasn’t 100 percent right, and we didn’t have time to try to make it that way.”

Will Smith was supposedly Tarantino's choice for the role (casting top shelf as he said), with rumors that Smith didn't take it because of the controversial nature of the part, and also the fact that he'd be playing second fiddle to Christoph Waltz's character for much of the film.

But no matter at this point I guess. So, file this one away in the "done" pile.

Now you know.

In the interview, he also talks about retiring from filmmaking, rewriting history via his movies, and more. You can read it all HERE.